Gossip Should Have No Friends

Tags:

Twitterpated idols: American Idol kicked off its Season 8 coast-to-coast live tour at the Rose Garden on Sunday night, and we’re told some people showed up to see officially gay crooner Adam Lambert debut a Bowie medley. (The L.A. Times’ “Idol Tracker” blog photographed some very impressive iron-on T-shirts outside the arena, but wondered at the city’s muted response to the quasi-stars among us: “I guess people in Portland don’t watch much TV,” a hotel bellman told them.) Far more importantly, the tour’s kickoff allowed Idolaters to virtually stalk eighth-place finalist Scott MacIntyre as he spent Monday updating his Twitter feed with his sightseeing stops, including Kenny Zuke’s and “Portland Food Carts..a Portland experience:).” Meanwhile, blogger-about-town Byron Beck reported that MacIntyre played piano in the Hotel Monaco lobby last Wednesday evening. “I guess there was a bevy of very young girls in tears surrounding the piano,” Beck wrote. That would be us.

CARRY OUT, CARRY ON: Yet another ambitious sandwich shop has opened, this time in Old Town. The People’s Sandwich of Portland carries cheesesteaks and Cubans at 53 NW 1st Ave. New cart of the week: Rick’s Wild Seafood, at Southwest 3rd Avenue and Ash Street, serves fish tacos, chowder and fish and chips. Speaking of carts, Mississippi Marketplace, a landscaped parking lot planned for the vacant lot at 4233 N Mississippi Ave., will have room for nine of them, plus 30 small booths.

The coop is flown: As first reported by PC-PDX.com, local house-show venue/community space the Coop is closing, with a final show scheduled on Sunday, July 12, as the finale of the four-day Resistance Fest Northwest. The North Portland house—formally known as Brainstains up until February 2008—was almost a second home to many local and touring punk bands, offering a venue that was both underground but also legit, charging money at the door and providing bands with a quality sound system. After a year and a half run, the landlord become tired of “kids treating the house like shit.”

R.I.P., RAIDER: Drake Levin, former guitarist for legendary rock outfit Paul Revere the Raiders, died at his San Francisco home July 4 after a long bout with throat cancer. Levin, who joined the 1963 Portland-based incarnation of the group that would ride the national charts until the end of that decade, left the Raiders in 1967 to form the Brotherhood with ex-Raiders Phil Volk and Mike Smith. He later played alongside artists like Emitt Rhodes and Ananda Shankar, and continued to play blues and rock music in the Bay Area until recently. “I’ve lost my dear friend, my Raider buddy, and the music world has lost a guitar icon,” bandmate Phil Volk wrote on his website. Levin was 62.